The pleasant suburb en route to the BC Ferries terminal boasts British and Irish, German and Polish, placing it among the most Caucasian part of multi-ethnic Metro Vancouver

Most of the gravestones in Boundary Bay Cemetery testify to the lives and deaths of residents with British-sounding surnames, such as Johnson, Thomas, MacLeod, Gordon, Cook, Brown and Watson.

Most of the rest of the gravestones honour people with surnames from continental Europe, such as Decicco, Gildenmeister, Vrba, Schmidt, Denis, Jaerlich, Jablonsky and Grigoropolos.

It is the rare Boundary Bay Cemetery gravestone that marks a Leong or Wong.

Tsawwassen, a pleasant, verdant suburb near the B.C. Ferry terminal to Victoria and the Gulf Islands, may be the most Caucasian, and European, region of multi-ethnic Metro Vancouver.

Even more Caucasian than West Vancouver, south Surrey, White Rock, north Coquitlam, Ladner, Kitsilano, Fort Langley and Bowen Island.

European echoes are commonplace in this town. For instance, the winding road serving the Tsawwassen mini-mansions with their panoramic views of Vancouver Island is called English Bluff Road.

Robbs Fish N Chips does a booming business in traditional Anglo-Saxon cuisine. One of the Starbucks, located in a shake-sided new building called The Oxford, has the architectural feel of a traditional British pub.

The famously sunny climate of Tsawwassen, in addition, is revealed via frequent rows of palm trees, evoking a vaguely California feel of the Beach Boys and blonds.

Unlike in many parts of Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby and Surrey, where ethnic Chinese or South Asian youngsters dominate, the schoolchildren in this Delta peninsula of 21,000 people are mostly white.

Fifty per cent of the people in one of the neighbourhoods east of 56th Street claim to have an English ancestor (throughout the rest of Metro Vancouver, people of “English” ancestry make up 23 per cent of the population).

There are British Celts represented as well, including among those who claim English origins. Since Canadians are allowed to name multiple ethnic ancestors when filling out the Census, another 37 per cent in the same Tsawwassen neighbourhood say they have Scottish roots, with 24 per cent declaring Irish backgrounds.

‘Little Rhodesia’

There is virtually no evidence that Tsawwassen deserves the somewhat pejorative nicknames it gained in the 1990s, of “Little Rhodesia” or “TsaWaspassen.”

Those names imply British, Protestant separatism. But, if such can be said of British people in Tsawwassen, an increasing number of Metro Vancouver residents suggest a similar charge could be levelled at residents of the strong Chinese or South Asian enclaves in Richmond, Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey.

In addition, even though fewer than one per cent of Tsawwassen residents are South Asian, one out of 10 people in some neighbourhoods in Tsawwassen is Chinese.

And ethnic Chinese people who have long lived in the quiet, peaceful suburb say they’ve never had any problems — indeed, they love living among what they maintain are Tsawwassen’s generous, community-minded residents.

In addition, Tsawwassen is not as overtly English-Scottish-Irish-Welsh as it might appear. An informal survey discovered more Western and Eastern Europeans than anything else.

For reasons that are fast becoming outmoded in high-immigrant Metro Vancouver, Statistics Canada doesn’t consider white people to be a “visible minority,” like Chinese, South Asian or Filipino people. This despite the fact Caucasians are a minority in many neighbourhoods of Metro. Instead, Statistics Canada monitors white people by their “ethnic origin,” of which they can claim many. That means white people often end up naming their ancestry as a combination — for example, English, Irish and Italian.

Indeed, 14 per cent of the residents east of 56th Street in Tsawwassen, between 12th and 6th avenues, claim a German heritage among their ancestry.

Another four per cent claim Norwegian blood. And 10 per cent have French backgrounds.

That’s the case with Terence Tetreault, a 60-year-old semi-retired public service manager, who moved eight years ago to Tsawwassen with his wife to get away from the noise, crime and “nonsense” of downtown Vancouver.

Tetreault and his English-Canadian-Polish wife were drawn to the “quiet, laid-back atmosphere” of Tsawwassen after the hustle and security concerns of living in a condominium complex near St. Paul’s Hospital in downtown Vancouver. He said it’s nothing to do with wanting to live among fellow Caucasians.

In addition to the hundreds of aboriginals living on the nearby Tsawwassen reserve, Tetreault says the well-off suburb of large houses, mini-malls, playing fields, golf courses and beachfront has a significant number of Iranian, Chinese, Japanese and South Asian people.

“Most of the adults who live here are professionals and business people. They’re sophisticated. They travel. They’re comfortable with people of all cultures.”

Sense of community

Laurence Tom, a 58-year-old Canadian-born businessman whose father was from China, has revelled in the “community” feel of Tsawwassen since he and his family moved to it 22 years ago.

“We all look after one another,” he said.

Calling himself a “Banana” — a person who looks Asian on the outside but is culturally white on the inside — Tom says, “I don’t look at myself as an Asian person. I just look at myself as a person. We just take such things for granted on the West Coast.”

Tom has no interest in moving to an ethnic enclave in Richmond or east Vancouver, where more than two-thirds of the residents of many neighbourhoods are ethnic Chinese. Among other things, he doesn’t speak the Mandarin dialect of most new Chinese immigrants. In addition, most of his relatives are in interracial relationships.

As her child played with the child of her friend Karen Zbitnoff, Germaine Wong said she has never experienced any “blatant” difficulty growing up in Tsawwassen as one of the relatively few ethnic Chinese.

But Wong, 36, wonders about how tolerant people are below the surface. She recounts hearing about a gay couple who once asked a Tsawwassen realtor if they should expect any discrimination if they bought a house in the suburb.

The story goes that the realtor replied: “It’s not a problem. As long as you’re not Chinese.”

Whether the story is accurate, Wong and Zbitnoff, a second-generation Tsawwassen resident with Russian and Croatian roots, say racial relations are generally excellent in the suburb, although they wonder if there could be some suspicion among older generations.

Whatever the case, Wong and Zbitnoff believe it’s great for their children to grow up with friends of different ethnicities. They only had two visible-minority students in their classrooms when they were youngsters in Tsawwassen.

For his part, Tetreault supports that open-minded point of view.

The only downsides to Tsawwassen, he said, are its dearth of movie theatres and concert venues, plus a shortage of diverse restaurants.

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